the personal blog of a newly-fledged biomedical informatician, about anatomy, computers, life, or just anything she finds interesting that day

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Things are looking up, I hope

One of the kindest things I've witnessed is when someone deep in mourning for a pet nevertheless takes the time to reach out, and pass on that pet's unused food or medication for someone else in need to use. It takes compassion to get out of one's own pain and to think of others at such a difficult time, and I've always admired people who can reach out in that way.

Even by my own low baseline, I've sucked at blogging lately. I started listing the RL things that have happened in the past year, and had to stop because the list itself was so long, it became a stressor in its own right.

But things are calming down, I hope, I hope. While I'm sitting here writing a paper, and have my beloved crime shows on as background noise, and they just ran a commercial for a product called Little Allergies.

Which reminded me that back in June, I bought a similar product called Little Noses on my vet's recommendation, to use for Cleo. She was so sick, and needed surgery so badly, yet we couldn't get a handle on her upper respiratory symptoms long enough to feel confident to schedule surgery. We hoped that a combination of drugs plus manual decongestion with the saline solution would get her into shape for surgery, but it turned out to be too late for those measures. She needed surgery right away, and we didn't even have time to try the Little Noses because she had ceased eating.

I've never been much of a housekeeper at the best of times, but during the May-October extended cat emergency season this year, the place has gone even further to hell than is the norm. Now that events are ebbing a bit (I hope!) I've been cleaning up the place a bit. As I did so, I found Cleo's Little Noses, sitting unused right where I left it.

For once, it was a joy to pass on unused medication to the vet, who told me that yes, there are certainly people and animals who can use it. I am grateful that, this once, the medicine is being donated because Cleo is doing just fine without it. She's made a full recovery, and is returning to being the mesomorph she used to be.

So the tally since May: 3 emergencies, 3 good outcomes. With less than half her teeth remaining, Cleo has resumed her place on the warm pad and is watching the world go by. Isadora needs minor wound care for a little recurrent seepage at the site of her ear amputation, but otherwise doesn't miss the ear and the chronic infections a bit. Simon (Caspian) remains the most fragile, but he is trending the right way--his BUN and creatinine were so high when we took him in that the vet's instruments couldn't even read the values. They had been trending down, and currently are plateaued at very high, but readable values. The vet says with the values, he ought to be acting a lot sicker than he is--he is gaining weight, and approaching us affectionately, which encourages me that maybe--whatever is attacking his kidneys--he is fighting it off.

Speaking of fighting off, he is determinedly non-compliant about the fluids, pills, and hand-feeding I'm currently carrying out; I prefer to look at it as fighting back as an encouraging improvement, in addition to being a major pain in the ass.

So rather than tempt fate by promising a definite date when I'll be more diligent about blogging, I'll just mark that things are continuing to get better, and--despite the best efforts of RL to kick my ass--we have not given up!